It ran through the oak plantation and so to the sea, some two or three miles further on, said my landlady; but nobody would have thought it was so near.
"T'squire was to be away to-day," observed the woman, with the broad vowel sound which I shall not attempt to reproduce in print.

"He was going to Lancaster, I believe." "So I understood," said I."I didn't think of troubling him, if that's what you mean.

I'm going to take his advice and fish the beck." And I proceeded to do so after a hearty early dinner: the keen, chill air was doing me good already: the "perfect quiet" was finding its way into my soul.

I blessed my specialist, I blessed Squire Rattray, I blessed the very villains who had brought us within each other's ken; and nowhere was my thanksgiving more fervent than in the deep cleft threaded by the beck; for here the shrewd yet gentle wind passed completely overhead, and the silence was purged of oppression by the ceaseless symphony of clear water running over clean stones.
But it was no day for fishing, and no place for the fly, though I went through the form of throwing one for several hours.

Here the stream merely rinsed its bed, there it stood so still, in pools of liquid amber, that, when the sun shone, the very pebbles showed their shadows in the deepest places.